Project description

CONTECS was a "Specific Support Action" financed within the 6th Framework Program of the European Commission. The goal of the project was to identify the most important ethical, legal and social aspects of the development of Converging Technologies, to examine these and finally to derive from the findings proposals for a research agenda for the 7th Framework Program. Besides comprehensive analysis of documents and the internet on various aspects of CT, work done for this purpose consisted of expert workshops and interviews. The results were incorporated in validated reports on scientific and technological trends in converging technologies, on the current debate on CT in the social sciences and humanities and on the research policy framework for these developments. Workshops with experts and stakeholders served not only to validate and make more concrete the results but also to present the topic CT to a broader scientific public and to arouse and reinforce awareness for the relevance and related issues for the social sciences and humanities among scientists belonging to the disciplines involved.